Our friend is an alcoholic and depressed… what can we do???

One of our good friends is turning into, what seems to be, an alcoholic.

BACKSTORY: Bob had gastric bypass, lost about 90 lbs, and then had his ex-crush move in with him. She hadn’t spoken to him in years, got divorced from her husband, and needed a place to stay. So she started talking to Bob again/hanging out with him again… and he let her move in. We’ve all be VERY vocal about how much of a mistake this was. He plays a martyr and says “even though it kills me to have her around, I needed to help her. that’s just the kind of guy I am.” She’s actually been very straight-forward with him and told him that she’s ONLY his friend. She’s recently dating someone else now, and brings him home often… and Bob hates that. he hates seeing her with someone else.. but instead of leaving the house on the weekends, he stays home. i think it’s kind of creepy… like he wants to listen to them and hang out with them so he can just be around her constantly.

So… I started getting weird texts from him. Bob drinks on weeknights, weekends, whenever. He’s gotten a concussion before because he fell and hit his head when he was drunk. This past weekend, I cant even count the times he used the phrase “One night when I was drinking/drunk…” He came over on Friday to spend the night (our group of friends still has sleepovers, never too old!) and he drank almost a whole bottle of Southern Comfort. He kept trying to get us to drink with him, but we didnt want to. we went to the grocery store a few hours into hanging out and he was telling almost everyone in the damn store that he was drunk.

ALSO – he joined dating websites and thought, because he’s lost 90lbs, that all of a sudden girls are just gonna flock to him. he got super cocky and is only trying to connect with … well, super-hot women. he’s had no luck, so i tried talking to him about maybe… not putting so much importance on appearance. his main user picture for one site, is a picture of MY FIANCE with Bob. this made my fiance very uncomfortable, because people browsing the site could easily think that it’s my fiance’s profile and not Bob’s. he asked Bob to remove it but Bob wont because he likes how he looks in that picture, but he wont crop my fiance out of it. how can my fiance get him to remove his picture from the dating website? (i think Bob is hoping that when girls see his profile, they’ll think he’s my fiance so they’ll talk to him to get to know him at first…)

it’s just a cycle of cluster fck and crazy. i’ve never seen Bob behave like this. none of us know what to say or what to do. any suggestions? please? :

It’s not unusual for people who have had gastric bypass to turn to alcohol when their issues come up again. The surgery may fix the body, but it doesn’t fix the mind. Since they can’t eat the way they used to, they drink.

Do you think you and your fiancée can persuade him into getting help? Could one or both of you go with him to an AA meeting or support group?

I’m not sure what either of you can do other than that. I hope he gets better.

@Rhopalocera: I don’t know if we could go with him to an AA group. He lives kind of far away from all of us, so driving would be expensive. I do want to try and get all of our friends together and figure out what we can do for him… maybe an intervention or something.

@AquaGrey8962: Hmmm… Do you think he’s the type of guy that would respond well to an intervention? Sometimes interventions do more harm than good. Having so many loved ones show up unexpectedly in one room could make things worse.

Before going the intervention route, maybe you could talk to him about what can happen to gastric bypass patients whose emotional issues aren’t worked on before the surgery or afterward. Try to find some literature on the subject and send it to him or talk to him about it.

Talking about the medical side of his issues first may be a good way to go. You could even try to persuade him to talk to a doctor about gastric bypass and alcoholism.